remedial goodness for Chelish archdukes
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Teenage girl. "Who's Cayden Cailean?"

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"Chaotic Good god of adventure, bravery, and drink. - I'm going to do, once we have the main temple open, sermons on all of the Good gods, in case any of them can pick someone up as a priest when Iomedae's busy."

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Well, if anyone were going to pick someone a god of adventure, bravery, and drink would be a solid bet, but probably they don't get anyone. She's not going to say that.

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Thank you Genoveva, probably a lot of other people were wondering that and were too nervous to say so. Uh. Is there a surface where he can attempt to draw a large map of the Inner Sea. It's not going to be a spectacularly good one but it'll approximately suffice. Here's Lake Encarthan. Here's Lastwall, where Marit grew up, and Molthune, which he passed through on his way to Kantaria. Here's Cheliax. Andoran, which freed itself from Hell about fifteen years ago. Taldor's over here on the other side of Andoran. A boat leaving Ostenso could make Taldor in.... probably a week? He's not an expert on boat travel times. 

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The various kids are actually going to stare at this map for a while and ask a bunch of basic geography questions instead of anything else about theology. They don't reliably know where anything is, even the recent breakaway parts of Cheliax. The revolutions were almost fifteen years ago and it'll probably also become apparent that some of the younger ones didn't know that they were ever a part of Cheliax at all.

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...you know, that seems valuable and important. It's probably helpful for realizing how much the Asmodeans were lying about everything and it's important when you're choosing your life course to know things about the world and what problems it has or had. 

Also in Lastwall the fact Hell's been dropping pieces of the empire since the day it conquered it was taken as reason to believe that the whole thing would crumble just like it eventually did, once someone was ready to fight for it.

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Most of them realize that the Asmodeans were lying about lots of stuff. They're kind of shaky on whether the world actually looks anything like this, and not saying so. But it'll probably make the Acts make more sense if they know what Lastwall says the world looks like.

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Maybe the mural that replaces Hell in the church in the town square should just be a map of the Inner Sea. 

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It also has two other walls, if they want to try drawing one and still have space left over for a normal mural.

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He's not actually any good at drawing but he and Arn can both try and see if either of them can pick it up relatively quickly. 

 

 

Today, though, after the sermon, they want to talk to Narikopolus, if he's available.

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"Thank you for your time, Archduke. Obviously we're just starting to get a sense of what people need and what they're concerned about and what's going on. Everyone has been very helpful."

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"There is a - fundamental awkwardness about our role here and we wanted to discuss that with you and see whether there is some way to address it. Essentially it is that - we are here to assist you. We want to teach you about Iomedae and help you recover from Asmodeanism and escape Hell. And also - I wrote to Lastwall last night to explain that there are no Good clerics here at all and they need to send one urgently, and that I think this is likely a safe enough environment for one, at least politically. I assume that that, too, is part of what you wanted us here to do, to communicate to the Church and potentially to the Queen that work on fixing things is underway here."

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"The problem is that these two duties are going to frequently be in tension. Say that someone knows about something bad happening here, and they want to fix it, but they don't want it reported to the Queen or to Lastwall - they might expect that they cannot usefully get our input at all. Or if someone wants to - confess to some crime they committed, for the sake of their soul or for the sake of discussing how the rules could be changed so as to prevent it in the future, they're not going to have that conversation with someone who might report them. In Lastwall a priest can offer confidentiality for confessions, and be barred by law from ever repeating them or intentionally conveying anything they learned in them. We can promise that - with the caveat that we can be mindread or obliged to testify - but I'm not sure people will....believe us about it..."

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"That seems very useful." Possibly it works that way in Lastwall. "Of course I don't know Cheliax to have any such legal provision right now. If you want to hear about crimes it does seem that it might be difficult to get people to confess to them."

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"Mostly people have been reporting each other, for potential crimes. I am not sure how to approach that. Obviously we want to know about them but it seems....potentially corrosive, the way it's currently being understood."

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"Well. Reporting crimes you learn of to a just legal system that will address them appropriately is the right thing to do. It is also, of course, very painful and difficult to report someone you love for a crime. The impulse to protect people is a Good one. It shouldn't always be overriding, but - pitting Good impulses against each other is the kind of thing you want to avoid, wherever you can. 

I don't think the people we have met yesterday and today have the slightest reason to believe we are, or would be making demands on behalf of, a just legal system that will address them appropriately. I think everyone we have talked to would not be very surprised if we do random vicious unpredictable things and order lots of people executed and sent to Hell and make everything worse for them and their loved ones. And - it seems unfair to them to expect of them, given that, that they report things to us."

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Also you still do torturous executions.

 

He doesn't say that.

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"And you're concerned that this means that people won't report crimes, or that they are anyway?"

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"I think it means some people won't report and that some people will, in which case I do want to follow up, but - I think it would impede us in our primary duty here, which is to heal the wounds Asmodeus did to Menador, if people are relating to us mostly as - here to punish evils we learned of."

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"Well. As I understand it you don't in fact have the authority to punish people here, except by recommending a course of action to me or to the Queen. If it would make your job easier I suppose you can avoid telling me about any crimes you learn about, though I don't know how long it will take people to notice that the specific crimes they speak to you about aren't being followed by charges."

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"I mean if we do that we'll tell everybody we adopted a policy of doing that. If you are comfortable with our doing so I think we might do that for now." 

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